We love to cured meat. Certainly, the pleasures of the great long cured meats of the world don’t escape us–Iberico, Benton’s, etc.–but we’re also huge fans of the power of quick-curing proteins prior to cooking. Like us, meat is mostly water and to the extent you can extract this away, you can intensify the flavor of a meat. Recently we described this as a key step in our Bo Ssam framework and we’ve even packaged together one curing blend that we’ve used with great success.

The Studiofeast Cure for Meats was a limited edition giveaway at one of our recent dinners. There are some left in limited quantities, so email me if you’re interested in getting your hands on one. The labels and the name were lovingly designed by our very own Soomin Baik and we think they’re wonderful…

This cure is best applied to large, red meats and is applied at a ratio of 1/4 cup per 1lb of meat. Things like pork shoulder, beef brisket, and lamb shank are perfect with this. We simply cover the surface of the meat with the cure, place in a large container and refrigerate overnight. You’ll be left with a small pool of liquid and cure in the bottom of your container which you should discard as you rinse the excess cure off of the meat. With that, you’re left with a quick cured protein that’s lost some of its water content and has a slight sweetness imparted onto it from the cure. Cook the meat as you wish and I swear you’ll taste a great difference. Quick curing is a simple, but effective force multiplier that’s great at amplifying flavor in your proteins.